Center for Health Data and Analysis

Hospital Discharge Data

The Rhode Island Department of Health (HEALTH), Center for Health Data and Analysis, collects data on inpatient discharges from the licensed acute care hospitals and one rehabilitation facility in Rhode Island.  The Hospital Discharge Data are collected through a system of hospital-based reporting that was established as of October 1, 1989, by regulations promulgated by HEALTH under its licensure authority (R.I.G.L. 23-17-10 “Licensing of Health Care Facilities”). Through December 31, 2004 the inpatient data reporting requirements are specified in Appendix A of the hospital licensure regulations, Specifications For Uniform Reporting of Financial and Statistical Data: Hospital Inpatient Services . Section 17.5 of current licensure regulations require data reporting according to the Rhode Island Hospital Discharge Data Reporting Manual. Data was reported per the Reporting Manual beginning January 1, 2005.

The Hospital Discharge Data currently contain patient-level information for all inpatients discharged from the eleven general hospitals, two psychiatric hospitals, and one inpatient rehabilitation facility in Rhode Island.  Hospitals report inpatient discharge data to the Rhode Island Department of Health, Center for Health Data and Analysis within 90 days after the end of each calendar quarter.  The data reported includes demographic data, clinical items, and hospital charges.  The eleven acute care general hospitals submit their data through the shared data system of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island.  The Center for Health Data and Analysis compiles the inpatient discharge data submissions from all fourteen reporting hospitals and creates the public use file approximately six months after the end of each calendar quarter. 

For additional information regarding the Hospital Discharge Data Set, please see the publication Health Data Inventory.

Web Query System

Statistics from Rhode Island hospital discharge data 2002 and later are available on HCUPnet, a free, online query system as part of the national Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). HCUP is a family of health care databases and related software tools and products developed through a Federal-State-Industry partnership and sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. For more information on HCUP, please visit http://www.ahrq.gov/data/hcup/.

HCUPnet is an online query system that provides instant access to the largest set of all-payer health care databases that are publicly available. Using HCUPnet's easy step-by-step query system, researchers can generate tables and graphs on national and regional statistics and trends for community hospitals in the U.S. Specifically, researchers can use HCUPnet to see Rhode Island data to aggregate with or compare to comparable data from other states and the nation. HCUPnet generates statistics using data from HCUP's Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), the Kids' Inpatient Database (KID), and the State Inpatient Databases (SID). HCUPnet’s database includes pre-aggregated data, not patient-level data, to speed up data transfer and protect individual records. For information on obtaining patient-level information, please see Public Use Data Files (below) for more information.

Public Use Data File

Under the provisions of the State’s Open Records Law, the Center for Health Data and Analysis prepares and makes available a public use data file consisting of patient-level data excluding all information that can potentially identify a patient.  Such public use files are available for the eleven general hospitals only covering the period October 1, 1987, through September 30, 1998.  Public use files including data from the general hospitals, the psychiatric hospitals, and the rehabilitation facility are available from October 1, 1998, to the most recent reporting period.  Public use files are available by calendar years (January 1 through December 31), by the fiscal year used by most hospitals (October 1 through September 30), or for other periods by special request. 

Certain data elements have been recoded in the public use data files to minimize the chance of identifying individuals. For information on the full file, please contact the Center for Health Data and Analysis.

Public use data files in a standardized format are available for Rhode Island and other select states through HCUP.